Doctor Who and Polybius' Wrath
by Nick Grizzle
Summary: A mysterious arcade game of video game lore catches the Doctor's attention. He discovers something far more sinister than a myth... [A Short Story]


Doctor Who

and

Polybius' Wrath!

By: Dakota Hudson

The Doctor's Electronic Diary Entry

June 9th, 2014 (Earth Time)

On my usual journeys throughout the entirety of space and time I usually don't travel too often to the States or its timeline. However, yesterday I made a stop to a small and quiet secondhand store in downtown Atlanta. As one of my down time hobbies I like to visit these little rubbish shops to see what they have for sale. Occasionally, I'll buy something that interests me. Well, during this visit I found a relic from the 1980s. An old arcade game cabinet bearing the name "POLYBIUS".

Now I have heard the urban legends about this video game and the whole manner of tall tales associated with it. Honestly, I thought it was a fake, but figured it would serve as a nice curio in my game room aboard the TARDIS, perhaps the game may be playable. Excited at this thought and the fact I have a fondness for Human video game nostalgia, I walked up to the shopkeeper's counter to inquire about the game cabinet. The shopkeeper was a wizened old man with thick wrinkles lining his face. "Hello sir! I am interested in the arcade game in the back, I was wondering how much would you like for it?" I asked him.

When he heard my inquiry, his face froze and he slowly turned to say something to me, but then looked around quickly as if he was afraid of something. "Sir, are you okay? Here have a jellybaby to calm yourself." I said to him offering him the candy bag. He declined my offer. "Sorry, but that game gives me the creeps. I'll take $20 for it." he said to me in a hurried fashion. With the man's behavior and the dirt cheap price for the arcade game, I became slightly suspicious but this served only to fuel my curiosity. What harm could an old arcade game do?

After a few minutes, I loaded the arcade game on board the TARDIS and immediately dematerialized into the Time Vortex. Then I decided to take a look at the machine to see if it was still functional. I took it apart and cleaned it and rewired it. Of course something stood out like a sore thumb. There was the usual electronics inside but also a few devices that appeared to be extra software discs and memory banks. They were similar to the ones that NASA would use to collect data from space probes. It's weird that such hi-tech would be used on a video game. But after I inspected them and repaired them I noticed another odd fixture among the screen components. Along with the main emitter tube, there was a smaller and more crude looking emitter tube. I had never seen anything like it in all of the technologies I've seen over the centuries. However it didn't seem too out of place seeing that it was set up and composed what you would expect from 1980s Earth technology.

I dismissed the strange emitter as part of an experimental prototype in use for producing vector graphics that supposively were used in POLYBIUS according to the myths surrounding the game. Plus, with the NASA-grade components this made sense because it would require a lot of computational power to operate this game based on this type of technology. So, I finished the repair and cleaning of the arcade game and plugged it up to the TARDIS power grid. The game came to life and I decided to give it a try. I started to believe that this was the genuine game. The real McCoy. Like in the myths, it was a combination of a space shooter and puzzle solver. Being a Time Lord, gameplay was easy for me. As I played I failed to realize how many hours went by.

It seems that the game was like a drug being that it was addictive and the hallucinogenic imagery that unfolded as I progressed through the game. As I played more of the game, going deeper and deeper into the levels, I had a growing nagging feeling in the back of my skull that quickly turned into an intense migraine. It was at this moment I attempted to let go of the joystick. No matter how hard I tried to pull away, the stronger my grip became on the joystick. Some unknown force was attacking my mind with a powerful telepathic bolt. This force was trying to control my body as my mind desperate to fight off the influence. I let out a cry of intense pain and was on the verge of blacking out when I pulled out my sonic screwdriver with my free hand. I activated my screwdriver and I succumbed to the blackness.

What seem to be a few hours later I awoke on the floor of the game room. I noticed a small amount of smoke coming from the shattered screen of the arcade game. I rose up from the floor and went over to the game. Inside the remains of the screen, on a circuit board, I had missed a small line of text from earlier. Printed on it that said: US GOV'T. CIA PROJECT: MK ULTRA PHASE II/POLYBIUS TOP SECRET. I unhooked the terrifying arcade game from the grid and proceeded to lock it up in one of the TARDIS's maximum security vaults. There it would no longer threaten gamers. So much for being a myth.

End Transmission…


End file.
